Bra Amnesty 2023

Donate your unwanted bras to help raise money for Against Breast Cancer, the wonderful charity that does research into secondary breast cancer.

Our annual Bra Amnesty 2023 runs from 24 April to 6 May at our Notting Hill store. 

We collect old bras for recycling and Against Breast Cancer receives £700 for each tonne of bras collected.

This year’s Bra Amnesty is sponsored by Maison Lejaby, the leading French lingerie house, which has donated 250 free bras for us to give to the first customers to take part in the amnesty. So just bring along your unwanted bras and we will give you a free Lejaby bra and fitting.*

Besides raising money for research, the Bra Amnesty protects the environment by preventing bras being thrown away and ending up in landfill. The bra recycling scheme also helps women in low-income countries buy bras.

Often the bras donated are brand new or hardly worn because so many women - more than 80% of women in the UK – end up with the wrong size bra. It is very easy to happen if you are badly fitted or you do not know how to measure your bra size properly.

Anyway, bras that are in good condition can be recycled and sent to countries such as Kenya, Togo and Ghana where they are too expensive to produce locally and too costly for most women to buy. The bras are given to small traders who sell them on at affordable prices. This helps the local economy and is good for the health of women who need the support of a bra. It is also makes women safer in countries where going braless can leave women more vulnerable to abuse.

Any bras that are beyond redemption are dismantled and the materials carefully recycled. Bra recycling helps address the huge environmental challenge posed by discarded clothing, which is now one of the fastest growing categories of waste and environmental pollution. .

An estimated 300,000 tonnes of clothing and textiles are thrown away by UK households every year and less than 1% of material used to produce clothing is recycled, according to a 2019 report from the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee.

According to UN Environment, the equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is landfilled or burned somewhere in the world every second. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation calculated that more than $500 billion of value is lost every year due to clothing underutilisation and the lack of recycling.

Our Bra Amnesty 2023

The Bra Amnesty 2023 runs for two weeks from 24 April to 6 May 2023.

If you have any unwanted bras to donate, bring them along to the shop at Maison SL, 53 Ledbury Road, Notting Hill, London, W11 2AA.

 

*While stocks last